Reviews of art, culture and literature

Month: December 2016

“Violence has always been a staple of literature, but it became an obsession during the 19th century, first with the Romantics and the vogue for Gothic horror, and later still with the development of detective fiction, which started with Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe in the mid-19th century.

“But as Scott Spector explains in Violent Sensations: Sex, Crime and Utopia in Vienna and Berlin, 1860-1914, it was anxiety about an apparent rise in violence and sexual degeneracy that made Berlin and Vienna twin centres for advances in the legal and scientific discussion of these topics. More specifically, Spector looks at what motivated people of the era to ask ‘Is there something inherent in modernity and urbanisation which causes degeneracy?’ Using German-language sources of the time, Spector examines four aspects of this discourse: biological models of criminal profiling; sexual crime; the emergence of the homosexual as a social and criminal phenomenon; and anti-Semitism.

“The industrial and scientific hubs of Vienna and Berlin were known not only as beacons for culture and enlightenment, but also as centres of squalor and depravity…”

“The Austrian government is taking steps to seize and destroy Hitler’s birthplace. The house where Hitler was born in 1889 is a terrace building in Braunau am Inn, Upper Austria. Recently, it has been a private residence and a care centre for the elderly. Since the centre closed, the Austrian central government has been negotiating with Frau Gerlinde Pommer, the owner, with the expressed intention of demolishing the building. As justification, the government has cited vague concerns about the building becoming a focus for neo-Nazi supporters. The demolition plans are opposed by historians, local residents and even spokesmen for minority groups.

The owner is unwilling to sell, and see a part of the historical fabric of the town destroyed, so the government is now seeking to pass a law allowing it to seize the property (with compensation). This is a draconian solution to an invented crisis…”

“In The New Philistines, Sohrab Ahmari has conducted a compelling exploration of how identity politics is now central to UK arts programming. Indeed, for many practitioners, identity politics is their sole subject.

Ahmari was first prompted to examine how identity politics has influenced so much quasi avant-garde art after experiencing a confused and patronising production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What Ahmari finds leads him to conclude that, far from being cutting edge, much supposedly edgy art is deeply conformist and reaches an audience disinclined to contest its political message.

As a London-based journalist at the Wall Street Journal, and an Iranian-born American, Ahmari is a well-positioned observer of British cultural life. He is both distanced from and familiar with what he commentates upon…”